An Islamic civil rights group says California leads the nation for the highest number of anti-Muslim incidents. But locally, Muslim bias is dropping.

The report by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, looked at everything from verbal harassment to employment discrimination. Basim Elkarra heads CAIR’s Sacramento office.

"And I’ll discuss a few cases that happened in the Sacramento Valley: a Muslim female was fired from a furniture store for wearing the veil; a neighbor of a Muslim family yelled racial slurs while his family was playing in the backyard."

But the number of cases in the Sacramento area has dropped from 76 in 2005 to 71 in 2006. Dr. Irfan Haq is with the Council of Sacramento Valley Islamic Organizations.

"Sacramento is an area of which we are very proud and we’ve had the opportunity to work with law enforcement and to educate the community and that has had its impact and we see that the numbers are down."

Statewide however, the numbers aren’t so good. In fact, California leads the country with more than 700 complaints. That’s double the number of incidents in Illinois, the state with the second highest number of complaints.